Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Lightsail
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) designed to present an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan.
$3.50
per month
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…
$0
Bluehost
Score 5.7 out of 10
N/A
Bluehost, headquartered in Orem, Utah, offers website hosting. Bluehost also offers managed WordPress hosting, with optional SEO and marketing tools for WordPress plans.
$19.95
per month for 36 month term
Pricing
Amazon LightsailAWS CloudFormationBluehost
Editions & Modules
512 MB Linux
$3.50
per month
1 GB Linux
$5.00
per month
2 GB Linux
$10.00
per month
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
Shared WordPress Hosting
$3.95-$16.99
per month
Shared Web Hosting
$3.95-$26.99
per month for 36 month term
eCommerce - WooCommerce Hosting
$15.95-$49.95
per month, 1 month to 36 month terms available
Managed WordPress (beta)
$19.95
per month for 36 month term
VPS Hosting
$19.99 - $119.99
per month
Blue Sky Live WordPress Support
$29.00-$149.00
per month
Dedicated Hosting
$79.99-$209.99
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon LightsailAWS CloudFormationBluehost
Free Trial
NoYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon LightsailAWS CloudFormationBluehost
Features
Amazon LightsailAWS CloudFormationBluehost
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
8.8
6 Ratings
7% above category average
AWS CloudFormation
-
Ratings
Bluehost
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.06 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling5.05 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.34 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.06 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.06 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.95 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support10.06 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls10.06 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation10.05 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Configuration Management
Comparison of Configuration Management features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
-
Ratings
AWS CloudFormation
8.2
2 Ratings
2% above category average
Bluehost
-
Ratings
Infrastructure Automation00 Ratings8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated Provisioning00 Ratings8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Parallel Execution00 Ratings8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Node Management00 Ratings7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Logging00 Ratings7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Version Control00 Ratings9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon LightsailAWS CloudFormationBluehost
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
HashiCorp Vagrant
HashiCorp Vagrant
Score 10.0 out of 10
Flywheel
Flywheel
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 7.2 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
AccuWebHosting.Com
AccuWebHosting.Com
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon LightsailAWS CloudFormationBluehost
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(6 ratings)
8.0
(7 ratings)
4.9
(19 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(6 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon LightsailAWS CloudFormationBluehost
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
We utilized Amazon Lightsail to get a web application proof of concept up and running. It's easy to set up, requires minimal configuration, and lets us to concentrate on the coding. It's designed to help you get started fast and easily, but it's not designed for corporate applications or workloads.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
I still give it an 8 because it's one of those tools that just quietly does the heavy lifting for you but it can really test your patience when it breaks esp with deep nested stacks. It's perfect for projects where we need clean consistent environments every time. It's less ideal for quick experimental setups like new EC2 configs or Lambda permission tweaks.
Read full review
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
Bluehost is a decent all-around choice for web hosting with professional web development and domain management features that are particularly ideal for WordPress websites and blogs. They have a good reputation within the industry as a company that invests heavily in new technology and platform innovation. Bluehost has made a lot of improvements to customize their back-end administration (AMP & control panel) by working to improve the usability and design of the browser interface. Bluehost is primarily focused on customers who use WordPress and we would recommend either their hybrid cloud or managed WordPress platform, which provides everything that you need to build and maintain a popular website. All in all, Bluehost is a well-established brand that continually improves its hosting products, regularly upgrades their data center hardware, and is generally considered a leader in the development of new cloud hosting platform services.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Its provide pre configured Apps and operating system
  • Very easy to use interface and the cost is also very low
  • Integration with other AWS services like route53, S3 etc
Read full review
Amazon AWS
  • All resources can segregated based on stacks which provides greater visibility
  • A complete audit trail of what went wrong while deploying a particular resource
  • Automatically rollbacks if any service as part of CloudFormation results in an error
  • The UI tool is useful
Read full review
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
  • Customer service/tech support is simply top-notch. Being able to pick up the phone, get help, and not get charged for it is rare in the tech-support world.
  • Their Dashboard/C-panel has a wide selection of popular tools and options to make website design and all that goes with it very easy. Lots of choices; they are more than a simple hosting service.
  • Keeping their tools up-to-date. I never have to worry about upgrades or having the latest features; it just happens automatically!
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • slow
  • complex integration to AWS Cloudwatch - complex setup required
  • No IPv6, a big downside
  • less value compared with Linode or Digital Ocean
Read full review
Amazon AWS
  • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
  • Slow to create, delete or update.
  • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
Read full review
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
  • Setting up wasn't difficult but I think for some having tutorial videos would have been better than screenshots.
  • Provide more than one free domain on the Plus plan.
  • Offer site migration - not an option I saw when I signed up.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
My overall experience with Amazon Lightsail is very good, and the online community of Lightsail users is very large and its helps to resolve any kind of issue i faced on my server. I also like the integration of other AWS services with Amazon Lightsail like we can export our Lightsail instance into ec2 server using snapshots.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.
Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.
However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.
Read full review
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
I use Wordpress for my website on Bluehost, so I already know how it works and happy with it. I gave it this rating as I love the fact that If you do plan on creating multiple websites on Bluehost you'll be able to create specific login access for each website sites making it less likely to enter into the wrong website accounts. Which makes it even easier to manage client websites if you plan to create and host websites on behalf of your clients.
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
They are quick, easily reached, and can usually solve problems on the first try. However I noticed I had to go to customer support more often than with other providers, whether that was things breaking more often or if their customer support couldn't fix things on the first try. But in most scenarios, they are fine.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Lightsail is a great platform. Before we started using it, we were using AWS EC2 instances as our primary servers after being dissatisfied with other providers. After Amazon Lightsail's introduction, we were able to reduce our operating costs, improve our quality assurance tasks, and provide much more efficient and better apps with our microservices architecture.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information. Management guide.For information copy of the original. The new virtual Cloning virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information
Read full review
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
Bluehost did not stack up against HostGator; in fact, HostGator was where we ended up migrating after we realized Bluehost was not for us. Bluehost is not geared toward businesses, especially ones like ours that have a very customized site. HostGator allowed us the customization that we needed, and their prices were terrific.
Read full review
Scalability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
The website is slow. The speed is not reliable. Sometimes, sites would go down without warning. You would have to get a VPS to get consistent speed. If you have small website as a hobby, then Bluehost will be sufficient. Otherwise, I recommend looking for something more fast. Storage is good, but speed is lacking
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Hosting a production application on Lightsail will guarantee you a loss
  • Saved lots of time for our prototyping
  • Other VPS providers are better
Read full review
Amazon AWS
  • + We can standup a VPC in minutes
  • - It took a lot of inital time to set up
  • + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.
Read full review
Newfold Digital (Endurance + Web.com)
  • It allowed me to get my website up and running and sell services.
  • It is fairly low cost, so it was easy to recoup my investment.
  • Having to pay for a whole year upfront made it take a little longer to get the return on my investment.
Read full review
ScreenShots

AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview